Movies that Should be Comics # 18 : Whip It!

Just finished watching Whip It, the roller derby coming-of-age flick-starring Ellen Page (it also happens to mark the directoral debut of Drew Barrymore). Page stars as Bliss, a 17 year old small-town girl who rebels against her pageant-happy mom by secretly joining a roller derby team.

One of the best things about the movie is the names of the characters (Bliss takes on the name Babe Ruthless, and Barrymore has a small role as Smashley Simpson). Anyways, the movie is well written and more or less well acted and directed. The movie is probably made for girls who want to live out their tough girl fantasies through Bliss's rags-to-badass transformation. As such, the movie is very, very successful. The character development in the film is nice. Bliss's involvement in roller derby has a noticeable effect on her sense of self, and all her relationships are changed as a result by the story's end.

If I had the reigns at a comicbook company with a little money to spend (IT COULD HAPPEN!), I would hire emerging cartoonist Ross Campbell (Wet Moon, Water Baby, Shadoweyes) to turn Whip It into a graphic novel series. He has a serious command of the medium, and a knack for capturing the personalities of hot weird girls of every conceivable shape, size and color. I think Ross could pull off the seemingly mutually exclusive tasks of making a comic version that appealed to both male and female readers. Men and women approach the topics of sex, violence, sports, etc differently, so many artists would have trouble appealing to both at the same time, but Ross is definitely up to it. I mean, my wife and I are both straight GEEKING for the next installment of Wet Moon, his slice-of-life book about the trials and tribulations of emo art school chicks, so I believe he's the man for the job. To peep more of his work, click here.

Merk (murk) v. 1) to leave suddenly. 2) to kill someone (i.e. to make THEM leave this earth)

Sneakeasy (SNEEK' ee zee) n. movie theater/multiplex that makes it easy to watch multiple movies while only paying for one. the Sneakeasies label is applied when i went and watched a ton'a movies then reviewed them all in one shot.